MORLEY 



Biographical 
Sketch 



DOUBLEDAY 
PAGE a CO. 




Photu III/ Chaiies U. Dai> 



Christopher Morley 



Christopher 

Morley 



His History done by divers hands, 
together with a list of w orks by 
this author^ thus modestly offered 
to your attention 



Printed at Garden City^ New York^ at The 
Country Life Press j by 

DOUBLEDAY. PAGE & COT 

1922 






Copyright, IQ22, by 
DOUBLEDAY, PaGE & CoMPANY 



C1A695263 

JAN 11 '23 



^s 



Christopher 
Morley 




THERE are in this 
country and in Eng- 
land a few copies of a 
slender blue-gray book- 
let of verses (long since 
out of print) with the 
title "The Eighth Sin" 
on the cover in large 
black letters, and be- 
"neath it in smaller letters, modestly, the name C. D. Morley. 
They who own this little book prize it highly, not because it 
is great poetry (the author would be the first to deny it) but 
because it is the maiden effort of one Christopher Darling- 
ton Morley. 

This Christopher Morley, known also as Kit and Chris, 
was born at Haverford, Pennsylvania, May 5, 1890. His 
parents are both English by birth, though they have lived 
for many years in this country. His father, Frank Morley, 
the distinguished mathematician, is a graduate of Cambridge 
University who came to Haverford College in 1887 as 
professor of mathematics. Dr. Morley, an English Quaker, 
came from Woodbridge, the lovely little town in Suffolk 
(the home of Edward FitzGerald) to which his son has paid 
tribute in "Shandygaff." From his mother also, Chris- 
topher undoubtedly derived his quota of imagination and 
literary tastes: she is a gifted musician, a poet, and (her 
son never fails to add) a fine cook. And her father was 
at one time associated with the famous London publishing 
house of Chapman and Hall. 



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So the formative years of Christopher Morley's life were 
spent under the shadow of college buildings and in the gentle 
atmosphere of good books and cultured people. On the 
campus of Haverford College, a place of unique and quiet 
beauty, he lived until he was ten years old. This small 
Quaker college is unique among American institutions in its 
Anglo-American flavor. When its grounds were laid out, 
ninety years ago, by an English landscape gardener, he in- 
troduced cricket among the students, and Haverford College 
has been the shrine of that game in America. For many 
3'ears the college made a point of having one or more dis- 
tinguished Englishmen on its faculty — perhaps with the 
characteristic Quaker intention of promoting international 
friendship. Every four years the college sent its cricket 
team abroad to spend the summer playing matches with the 
English colleges. This influence is worth noting, for this, 
and several summer vacations spent in England during child- 
hood, undoubtedly did much to promote in the young Morley 
his unusual blend of both civilizations. Ardent American 
as he is, he likes to think of America and England as two 
halves of the same idea, and speaks of his childhood as "an 
Anglo-American capsule." 

In 1900 Professor Morley moved to Baltimore to take 
the chair of pure mathematics at Johns Hopkins, which he 
still occupies. In that fascinating Southern city Christopher's 
school days were spent, and he returned to Haverford in 
1906 as an undergraduate. He graduated from the college 
in 1910. It is interesting to note that the subject of his 
baccalaureate thesis was Robert Louis Stevenson ; and the 
files of The Haverfordian, the student literary magazine, 
show some entertaining boyish outpourings, both in prose 
and in verse. There were some stories dealing with the mis- 
adventures of an Irish housemaid which show a curious 
anticipation of that vein of domestic comedy he has develope<i 



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In 1 910 he was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship to 
Oxford, representing Maryland, and the next three years 
were spent at New College. It was here that "The Eighth 
Sin" was committed. Morley likes to recall the comment 
of Mr. Herbert Fisher, his tutor at New College, on read- 
ing that juvenile pamphlet. "The chief advantage of writ- 
ing verse in youth," said Mr. Fisher, "is that it improves 
^^ne's prose style in old age." 

Morley has not written very much, in a formal way at 
least, about his Oxford adventure. Like almost all young 
Oxonians with literary instinct, he once projected an Oxford 
novel, and wrote several chapters before it went into his 
trunk of postponed schemes, to share a corner with the un- 
successful poem submitted in 191 3 for the fanious Newdigate 
Prize (the subject set for the Newdigate Poem that year 
happened to be "Oxford"). One gathers that the beauty 
and hilarity of that experience, in the last days of a world 
that can never come again — pre-War England — lie rather 
too close to the heart for casual journalism. But in a 
recent poem ("Parsons' Pleasure" — the name of the old 
bathing pool on the Ciierwell at Oxford) we find these 
lines- 
Two breeding-places I have known 
Where germinal my heart was sown; 
Two places from which I inherit 
The present business of my spirit: 
Haverford, Oxford, quietly 
May make a poet out of me. 

And between the lines in some earlier poems, as also in "Kath- 
leen," his light-hearted novelette of an Oxford undergrad- 
uate prank, one may discern something of the flavor of that 
interlude. 

In the summer of 19 13 he returned to America, and — 
we out here like to remember— came to Garden City to ask 
Mr. F. N. Doubleday ("EfiFendi") for a job. 



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"I remember, as though it were an hour ago, the first time 
1 ever saw Christopher Morley," says Mr. Doubleday. "He 
accepted an invitation to come into my office and discuss 
the burning subject he had so much on his mind, namely — 
a job. 

"He told me of his career from boyhood to very early 
manhood, and he was delightfully young with an enthusiasm 
which was very appealing. The high points in his career 
including his earning the Rhodes Scholarship and serving 
his term, as I remember it, in New College, Oxford. Chris- 
topher had now returned home to earn his living and he 
thought, as others have, that the most delightful way would 
be to become part of a publishing house, and Garden City, 
he added, looked good to him. I gave him the usual bromidic 
phrases about the difficulties of the publishing business, add- 
ing that he would make more money as a bond salesman or 
in a banking house, and that fortunes were as rare in Garden 
City as they were plentiful in Wall Street. 

"With this sort of conversation about banks and bankers 
he had small interest which he made quite obvious as he 
repeated again, '1 want a job, and I want it here and I hope 
right now,' not with the air of a life insurance agent but 
with the eagerness of a thirsty soul with refreshment in sight. 

"To get a breathing space 1 asked him if he had any plans 
along book lines on which a modest publisher could make a 
few stray dollars. This was indeed an opening. Morley 
immediately dove into a deep pocket and produced a large 
number of papers on which were worked out books and 
plans for series of books in vast array — names of authors in 
ample numbers who have had beyond the shadow of doubt 
the divine fire, and I confess I found his enthusiasm most 
contagious. 

"To gain time again, I suggested that to work out all 
these schemes would almost break the Chemical Bank and 
I attempted to show him how expensive it was to make a 



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whole series of books — 
but again I failed to keep 
his interest. He had it 
in his mind evidently 
that he had come to a 
publisher to talk books, 
not finance — a subject 
which, so far as I have 
been able to see, Morley 
found rather boring then 
and since. 

"And so his pictur- 
esque talk went on — 
Christopher full of en- 
thusiasm and hope for a 
vast collection of plans 
and the publisher cautious and mildly non-committal. Finally 
I said to him, 'You would have to be about ten men to suc- 
cessfully carry out all these plans ; now if you had your 
choice of any job in the place what would you choose?' 
Without a second's hesitation he said, 'Yours.' 

"Being a little weighted dov/n that morning with the 
difficulties of the job which the President of Doubleday, 
Page & Company takes as a daily routine, the idea much 
appealed to me and I felt that any youngster who was so 
eager to assume the burden of a somewhat com.plicated life 
might be encouraged. So I told him to hang up his coat 
and hat, put him at a desk, and told him to go to work at all 
his manifold plans and literary philanderings, reserving the 
right to restrain his commitments if necessary. 

"An amusing incident happened which I did not know 
of until afterwards. It seems that he had interviewed an- 
other officer of the company before he had seen me, and was 
told in reply to an insistent demand that there was no job 
for him and that he had best go back to New York. When 



8 



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this would-be employer returned a few hours later he was 
rather surprised to see Christopher installed in the 'job' and 
going strong. 

"This was, so far as I know, the beginning of Morley's 
connection with the editorial and publishing life. I always 
enjoyed his association with the house. He had one point 
especially I remember and that was that when he had an 
enthusiasm for a book and an author he would never let 
you forget it. I give him credit for his early discovery of 
the merits of Mr. William McFee's work. We were ac- 
customed to hold what we called a 'book-meeting,' when each 
member of the staff gave his suggestion about authors and 
books. For months when it came Christopher's turn to 
speak he always began, 'Now, about McFee — we don't ap- 
preciate what a comer he is' and so on for five minutes with- 
out taking breath until finally it became the joke of the 
meeting that nothing could be done until Morley's McFee 
speech had been made. Our jibes influenced him not at all. 
His only reply to our efforts in humor being to bring on a 
look of great seriousness and the eternal phrase, 'Now, about 
McFee.' 

"The writer claims to have some knowledge and appre- 
ciation of Mr. McFee but if he had the power for which 
Morley gave him credit, the sailorman's works would sell 
like Shakespeare and be translated into the tongues of all 
nations to the nethermost parts of the earth. 

"Those were pleasant days and even now to get a regular 
Morley letter — and they often run to many pages — is a 
literary treat tempered with regret that one must fall so 
greatly below the ideal Morley has in his vision of what a 
real publisher should do and feel." 

Besides his discovery of McFee there were two other im- 
portant events during Morley's sojourn of nearly four years 
at Garden City. He married Miss Helen Booth Fairchild, 
a New York girl whom he had met in England, and he 



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wrote his first novel, "Parnassus on Wheels." From this 
time forward the story of his life is the story of his work. 
So completely are they bound together that he hardly dis- 
tinguishes them himself. 

Successively (and successfully) he has held position on 
The Ladies' Home Journal (there are eyewitnesses to this), 
when he described himself as one of "the little group of 
wilful men who edit the Ladies' Home JournalT the Phila- 
delphia Evening Ledger, and, since 1920, on the New York 
Evening Post where he gives life to an editorial-page column 
which sails under the name of "The Bowling Green." 

His work in "The Bowling Green" is characteristic of 
his work elsewhere. Light and merry (as, of course, he 
should be) he never forgets the high responsibility which 
attends (or should attend) every position in which one sets 
down the printed word that all may read. The "Green" 
is playful and informal, but serious withal, and when the 
skipper nails his flag to the mast and bursts into a defense 
of something he thinks right it makes no difference what 
you or I, Tom, Dick, Harry, Harold, or Percival, think of 
it, he stands by the flag. 

"Parnassus on Wheels," published in 191 7, projected a 
new hero in the v/orld of letters, Roger Mifflin, the Prince 
of Booksellers, a quaint, shrewd, funny little bald-headed 
prince, but royal all the same, and it introduced a new idea 
into the world of reality, that of the wagon bookshop, which 
has since been carried out in various ways in many parts of 
the country. 

"Lord!" cries Roger (there are times when we almost 
forget and call him Christopher) "when you sell a man a 
book 3'ou don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink 
and glue — you sell him a whole new life. Love and friend- 
ship and humor and ships at sea by night — there's all heaven 
and earth in a book, a real book, I mean." Farther on in 
the same volume Mr. Morley savs "a good book, like Eve, 



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ought to come from somewhere near the third rib: there 
ought to be a heart vibrating in it.'' This might be called 
Morley's credoA There is a heart in every one of his books 
— and the heart is his. 

Roger Mifflin exhilarates the pages of another novel — he 
deserves to continue through many more — "The Haunted 
Bookshop." In this he has settled down in Brooklyn, and 
in addition to selling books, is gravely concerned with the 
education of that very delightful young lady, Titania. 

Between "Parnassus on Wheels" and "The Haunted 
Bookshop" came two other books, "Songs for a Little 
House," a sheaf of gay and tender lyrics for households of 
two or more, and "Shandygaff," a collection of essays. 

"Shandygaff" appeared at a time when there was a lament 
abroad that essay, like letter writing, was a lost art. But 
the people drank Mr. Morley's decoction, found it good to 
the tongue, and begged for more. The flagging interest 
in essays and their authors sprang to life, and to-day Morley 
is perhaps more widely known for his essays than for his 
poems, his novels, or his short stories. 

"Dear Burnet," wrote Don Marquis to Dana Burnet a few 
weeks after the publication of "Shandygaff," "I wish, while I 
am away from the office and you are running the Sun Dial, 
that you would say something in it about Christopher Mor- 
ley's book, 'Shandygaff,' just published by Doubleday, Page & 
Co. It is altogether the most delightful thing I have got my 
clutches on for a long time. But I would scarcely dare say so, 
while I was running the column, because one of the chapters 
of the book is an appreciation of me — a wonderful chapter. 

. . and all the others are nearly as good. . . ." 

Luscious titles have Morley's books of essays, "Shandy- 
gaff," "Mince Pie," "Plum Pudding," and "Pipefuls." There 
is one called "Travels in Philadelphia," a series of little 
excursions about town which made many others besides Mr. 
A. Edward Newton bemoan the time when Chris Morley 



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II 



"shook the dust of that city from his ample feet to come to 
New York." 

In 1921, nine years after "The Eighth Sin" first emerged 
upon the public, the George H. Doran Company issued a 
beautiful volume called "Chimneysmoke." It is a repre- 
sentative selection from Morley's earlier books of poems, 
"Songs for a Little House," "The Rocking Horse," and 
"Hide and Seek.' The poems are not primarily written for 
children, but children adore them. One of the most touch- 
ing tributes of the many that have come to the author is the 
bundle of letters (constantly added to) which small boys and 
girls have w;-itten him because they have read and loved 
the songs. Most of these verses celebrate the joys and 
humors of domesticity, and Mr. Morley makes one believe 
that the most desirable, the most indispensable, the most per- 
fect thing on earth is a house — preferably a little one — with 
a wife and children inside. If real estate agents would scatter 
copies of "Chimneysmoke" abroad over the country they 
could dispense with advertising, so thoroughly do his lines 

"abide for proof 
Joy dwells beneath a humble roof." ^-jsi^" 

Mr. Morley feels deeply that the home offers a theme 
for the Muse that need not be merely saccharine in senti- 
ment. There are some poets, he has remarked, "who deal 
with homely topics, and make them homelier still." Mr. 
Vincent O'SuUivan, a penetrating critic, traced the inspira- 
tion of Morley's domestic lyrics to "the English intimists, 
Herrick, George Herbert, Cowper, Crabbe." Indeed, though 
we do not find Mr. Morley so candid as the Devonshire 
parson in some matters, there is undoubtedly a kinship with 
the Herrick who wrote the "Thanksgiving for His House" — 

"A little house, whose humble roof 

Is weather-proof; 
Under the sparres of which I lie 

Both soft, and drie" 



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and also with the religious mysticism of Herbert. And a 
poem such as Mr. Morley's "At the Mermaid Cafeteria" 
(in "Chimneysmoke" ) is a direct throw-back to the mood 
of Elizabethan and Caroline poets. Our author's Eliza- 
bethan-sounding name has perhaps exerted a subconscious 
influence. No less a critic than Mr. E. V. Lucas, writing 
an introduction for the -English edition of "Chimneysmoke," 
says : — 



"Here he is established without a rival, on his own ground, as 
./ the poet of the home. Domesticity has had many celebrants, but 

I cannot remember any one work in which such a number of the 
expressions of Everyman, in his capacity as householder, husband 
and father, have been touched upon, and touched upon so happily 
and with such deep and simple sincerity. The poet of The Angel 
in the House was, I suppose, a predecessor; but Coventry Patmore 
was a mystic and a rhapsodist, whereas Mr. Morley keeps on a 
more normal plane and puts in verse, thoughts and feelings and 
excitements that most of us have known but have lacked the skill 
or will to epigrammatise. If we are to look in literature for a 
kindred spirit to Mr. Morley's we find it rather in the author of 
The Cotter's Saturday Night. But Mr. Morley is at once more 
modern and more modest. And he is more whimsical and original 
as an appreciator." 

(it is evident that Mr. Morley has tried to leaven senti- 
ment with humor; and, latterly, with that touch of satire 
that is his alter egol] He says, with a sort of rueful con- 
fusion, that the critic who described him as an "affectionate 
scorpion," came close to the truth. For indeed some of his 
verses do carry an ironical sting— for instance the pseudo 
"Translations from the Chinese" (his only excursion into 
free verse), shining chips of satire, wistfulness and beauty, 
flicked out of the hard pavements of the city. 
', ,.^ In 192 1 Christopher Morley came to the parting of the 
ways. He could continue to dig into the vein which he had 
found so rich and his friends had found so delightful, or he 
could risk the popularity he had justly earned, by moving on 
to a place where ^here was harder rock but more precious 



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13 




metal. The first meant 
stagnation the secend, 
growth. So there was 
really no choice. 

The definite line be- 
tween the old work and 
the new — a line as im- 
perceptible and as unes- 
capable as the equator — 
is in a short story called 
"Referred to the Author" 
published in 1921 by 
Doubled ay, Page &: 
Company, in "Tales from 
a Rolltop Desk." "An 
admirable story," Mr. 
Edward O'Brien said of it in "The Best Short Stories for 
1 92 1," "which almost any contemporary of Mr. Morley 
would have been glad to sign." The author confesses a par- 
ticular affection for this story— perhaps partly because none 
of the many magazine editors to whom it was offered would 
accept it. It goes deeper than any of the earlier stories, its 
manner is more polished, and it contains the beginning of 
that '(naive theology" which forms so large a part of his most 
important book, "Where the Blue Begins." 

It was the poet Morley who conceived this latter, the 
story ot the dog Gissing's search for God, but the novelist 
wrote it with the help of the dramatist while the essayist 
(who is the philosopher in the group) stood by and embel- 
lished it with wisdom and humour (which is the better part 
of wisdom). Yet when all these had done their best (and 
they did) there would have been lacking a certain charm if 
it had not been for a frisky little boy, as lovable and as ir- 
responsible as Peter Pan, who tweaked the ideas of these 
graver folk into caprice and fantasy. The little boy, as you 



14 



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have already guessed, is Morley himself, the real Morley 
as a crifc might say. And it is he who gives to the story 
not simply the charm of youth, but that infinitely greater 
charm which belongs to childhood and which is perhaps (who 
knows ?) really the place "where the blue begins " 



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15 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

THE EIGHTH SIN, Oxford: B. H. Blackwell, 1912. 

(Out of print.) 
PARNASSUS ON WHEELS, Doubleday, Page k Co., 

1917. 
SONGS FOR A LITTLE HOUSE, George H. Doran 

Co., 1917. 
SHANDYGAFF, Doubleday, Page & Co., 19 18. 
THE ROCKING HORSE, George H. Doran Co., 1919. 
THE HAUNTED BOOKSHOP, Doubleday, Page & 

Co., 1919. 
IN THE SWEET DRY AND DRY, Boni and Liveright, 

1919. (In collaboration with BART HALEY, out of 

print.) 
MINCE PIE, George H. Doran Co., 191 9- 
TRAVELS IN PHILADELPHIA, David McKay Co., 

1920. 
KATHLEEN, Doubleday, Page & Co., 1920. 
HIDE AND SEEK, George H. Doran Co., 1920. 
PIPEFULS, Doubleday, Page & Co., 1920. 
TALES FROM A ROLLTOP DESK, Doubleday, Page 

& Co., 1 92 1. 
PLUM PUDDING, Doubleday, Page k Co., 1921. 
CHIMNEYSMOKE, George H. Doran Co., 1921. 
THURSDAY EVENING (A One-Act Play), Stewart 

and Kidd Co., 1922. 
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CHINESE, George H. 

Doran Co., 1922. 
WHERE THE BLUE BEGINS, Doubleday, Page & Co., 

1922. 

Continued on next page 



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BIBLIOGRAPHY--(Con/inae^/) 



MODERN ESSAYS (An anthology, selected and with an 

introduction by Christopher Morley) Harcourt Brace 

and Co., 1921. 
REHEARSAL (A One-Act Play, included in A Treasury 

of Plays for Women, edited by Frank Shay, Little, Brown 

and Co., 1922.) 
THE STORY OF GINGER CUBES (A business satire, 

published by the New York Evening Post, 1922.) 




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